


nocturne iii: the feast

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [321]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Body Horror, Dreams and Nightmares, Foreshadowing, Gen, Happy Halloween, callbacks and call-forwards, creepiness, like...it's still Halloween somewhere right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27322918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: An old self delivers a warning.
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [321]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	nocturne iii: the feast

Leaving the body gingerly behind, you

cross the flagstones.

You expect them to turn to sinking sand, and they do, but not before you have cast a glance over your shoulder and seen yourself, ruined and weary, split open by your own leaving.

You climbed out of your body from the heart.

The sand swallows you up, filling the sockets of your eyes and the well of your mouth, which is not quite the same as eating. Except that you _are_ eating, now. Here you are, in the room that repeats itself over and over again, ten or twelve or twenty-five of you—

(More men than years.)

(But that was an innocent age.)

You are eating with your hands. You are greedy, and the land is in one of your fists, the sea slipping through the other.

You tear the meat and drink the blood.

_You must have something to offer, Feanorian._

Reed-thin, another Maedhros answers, _I come in friendship._

This Maedhros has two hands.

So do you, for now.

The meat and what you make of it rise up. The men you killed rise up. You rise up, all of you, and you say,

_Not here, God, not here._

_Thank your God, my boy. I lived._

The blood, the filth, the long table. To each Maedhros in turn, you pose the question. Do they know what is coming? Do they know?

None of them do.

At long last you come to the Maedhros that is not like the others. This one is young.

You would only know him from a green-glass mirror. The world would know him from an April night.

You don’t want to ask him.

_You must have something to offer, Feanorian. You are bold to come here…very bold._

You take your young face in both your grasping hands.

(This is what you do, with two hands.)

You press your fingers deep into his shrinking flesh, and you demand, every bone straining out of your body, every tooth straining out of your head,

_Do you know what is coming?_

He looks upon you with child-bravery. There is no blood on him. He says,

_Maedhros, come out of him._

Your right hand fails. The skin sloughs; the flesh boils, congealing blood. The heat becomes unbearable; the bones are splintered ash.

Yet the ash remains, and the you that is young remains also, his skin white through the black-spider shapes of what once splayed as fingers.

He says,

 _I never know what the future holds_.


End file.
